though the walls still stood, it was only an empty victory for the fire,
as bare brick and smoking ruins are poor food for flames.

Captain MacBride's dynamiting squad had realized that a stand was
hopeless except on Van Ness Avenue, their decision thus coinciding with
that of the authorities. They could have forced their explosives farther
in the burning section, but not a pound of guncotton could be or was
wasted. The ruined blocks of the wide thoroughfare formed a trench
through the clustered structures that the conflagration, wild as it was,
could not leap. Engines pumping brine through Fort Mason from the bay
completed the little work that the guncotton had left, but for three
days the haggard-eyed firemen guarded the flickering ruins.

The desolate waste straight through the heart of the city remained
a mute witness to the most heroic and effective work of the whole
calamity. Three men did this, and when their work was over and what
stood of the city rested quietly for the first time, they departed as
modestly as they had come. They were ordered to save San Francisco,
and they obeyed orders, and Captain MacBride and his two gunners made
history on that dreadful night.

They stayed the march of the conflagration at that critical point,
leaving it no channel to spread except along the wharf region, in which
its final force was spent. One side of Van Ness Avenue was gone; the
other remained, the fire leaping the broad open space only feebly in a
few places, where it was easily extinguished.

In this connection it is well to put on record an interesting
circumstance. This is that there is one place within pistol shot of San
Francisco that the earthquake did not touch, that did not lose a chimney